sar

- system activity reporter

Synopsis

sar [-aAbcdgkmpqruvwy] [-ofilename] t [n]

sar [-aAbcdgkmpqruvwy] [-etime] [-ffilename] [-isec]
[-stime]

Description

In the first instance, the sar utility samples cumulative activity counters in the
operating system at n intervals of t seconds, where t should be
5 or greater. If t is specified with more than one option, all
headers are printed together and the output can be difficult to read.
(If the sampling interval is less than 5, the activity of sar
itself can affect the sample.) If the -o option is specified, it
saves the samples in filename in binary format. The default value of n
is 1.

In the second instance, no sampling interval is specified. sar extracts data
from a previously recorded filename, either the one specified by the -f
option or, by default, the standard system activity daily data file /var/adm/sa/sadd
for the current day dd. The starting and ending times of the
report can be bounded using the -e and -s arguments with time
specified in the form hh[:mm[:ss]]. The -i option selects records at sec
second intervals. Otherwise, all intervals found in the data file are reported.

Options

The following options modify the subsets of information reported by sar.

-a

Reports use of file access system routines: iget/s, namei/s, dirblk/s

-A

Reports all data. Equivalent to -abcdgkmpqruvwy.

-b

Reports buffer activity:

bread/s, bwrit/s

transfers per second of data between system buffers and disk or other block devices.

lread/s, lwrit/s

accesses of system buffers.

%rcache, %wcache

cache hit ratios, that is, (1-bread/lread) as a percentage.

pread/s, pwrit/s

transfers using raw (physical) device mechanism.

If run in a non-global zone and the pools facility is active, these values reflect activity on the processors of the processor set of the pool to which the zone is bound.

-c

Reports system calls:

scall/s

system calls of all types.

sread/s, swrit/s, fork/s, exec/s

specific system calls.

rchar/s, wchar/s

characters transferred by read and write system calls. No incoming or outgoing exec(2) and fork(2) calls are reported.

If run in a non-global zone and the pools facility is active, these values reflect activity on the processors of the processor set of the pool to which the zone is bound.

-d

Reports activity for each block device (for example, disk or tape drive) with the exception of XDC disks and tape drives. When data is displayed, the device specification dsk- is generally used to represent a disk drive. The device specification used to represent a tape drive is machine dependent. The activity data reported is:

%busy, avque

portion of time device was busy servicing a transfer request, average number of requests outstanding during that time.

read/s, write/s, blks/s

number of read/write transfers from or to device, number of bytes transferred in 512-byte units.

Uses filename as the data source for sar. Default is the current daily data file /var/adm/sa/sadd.

-g

Reports paging activities:

pgout/s

page-out requests per second.

ppgout/s

pages paged-out per second.

pgfree/s

pages per second placed on the free list by the page stealing daemon.

pgscan/s

pages per second scanned by the page stealing daemon.

%ufs_ipf

the percentage of UFS inodes taken off the freelist by iget which had reusable pages associated with them. These pages are flushed and cannot be reclaimed by processes. Thus, this is the percentage of igets with page flushes.

If run in a non-global zone and the pools facility is active, these values reflect activity on the processors of the processor set of the pool to which the zone is bound.

-isec

Selects data at intervals as close as possible to sec seconds.

-k

Reports kernel memory allocation (KMA) activities:

sml_mem, alloc, fail

information about the memory pool reserving and allocating space for small requests: the amount of memory in bytes KMA has for the small pool, the number of bytes allocated to satisfy requests for small amounts of memory, and the number of requests for small amounts of memory that were not satisfied (failed).

lg_mem, alloc, fail

information for the large memory pool (analogous to the information for the small memory pool).

ovsz_alloc, fail

the amount of memory allocated for oversize requests and the number of oversize requests which could not be satisfied (because oversized memory is allocated dynamically, there is not a pool).

-m

Reports message and semaphore activities:

msg/s, sema/s

primitives per second.

If run in a non-global zone and the pools facility is active, these values reflect activity on the processors of the processor set of the pool to which the zone is bound.

-ofilename

Saves samples in file, filename, in binary format.

-p

Reports paging activities:

atch/s

page faults per second that are satisfied by reclaiming a page currently in memory (attaches per second).

pgin/s

page-in requests per second.

ppgin/s

pages paged-in per second.

pflt/s

page faults from protection errors per second (illegal access to page) or “copy-on-writes”.

vflt/s

address translation page faults per second (valid page not in memory).